Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Today was Megan's last weekday Karate class - next week she will be starting Saturday classes. I think she's a little bummed that she won't be going to class two times a week. And maybe even more bummed that Mr. Andy & Mr. Adam won't be her instructors.

So I made a little Thank You gift for the guys... Ninjas!!

The pattern is from Melly & Me. And it went together quick and easy (given my less-than-stellar previous experiences making softies... let's not even discuss the Rudy Reindeer that ended up in the trash... that's saying a lot!) I made a couple of changes to the pattern. The head and waist ties were supposed to be made from fabric, but turning a fabric tube that finishes at 3/8" was NOT going to happen. So I substituted 3/8" ribbon and it worked perfectly! I also used Elmer's washable glue and a hot iron to baste the ribbon before sewing it down. LIFE CHANGING... no chasing slippery ribbon under my sewing machine foot. I also didn't embroider the eyes... I'm calling it a design decision, but in reality I just plain and simple ran out of time. A friend suggested using buttons for the eyes next time.

The guys seemed to like them (even though I think one of them thought it was a monster) and Megan LOVED giving them (and telling the guys I made them).

Friday, July 25, 2014

Last weekend was our HMQG mini-quilt swap. I've been wanting to make a churn dash quilt for a while now, so I thought a mini-churn dash might be fun. But not just a plain churn dash... a scrappy churn dash.

Why blue? Well, you should see my blue scrap bin... I could probably make a full-size blue scrap quilt with what I have in that bin!

Megan and I had a great time digging through the scraps for the perfect pieces to add to this quilt. She really loved the few animal prints we added... a hippo, an elephant, a bug, and a couple of birds.

I spent the better part of a day debating how to quilt this. The plan was to quilt it on my regular sewing machine, since I figured it was too small to bother with loading on the longarm. But when I couldn't come up with any straight-line quilting ideas, I went ahead and loaded it up on the longarm. And you know what... it took no more time to load it onto the longarm than it would have to baste it. 30 minutes, start to finish, and it was ready for binding.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Round 2 of the Schnitzel and Boo Mini Quilt Swap has wrapped up. I wasn't going to participate in this round... too much going on, too many projects in the works... but at the very last minute I jumped in.

I didn't have a whole lot of specific direction from my partner. And when I'm left to my own devices I often trip myself up by overthinking the options. This time I found my inspiration early on.

I have these super-wonderful friends that save their selvedges for me, so I'm always looking for fun things to do with them. Selvedges and Spools seemed like the perfect combination!

Originally I was going to use the pattern in the Liberty Love book, but I already had a bunch of selvedges cut - larger than the pattern called for, and I didn't feel like re-cutting them. So I figured out my block size based on what I had. And I love how they turned out! I think I need to make a single spool for myself - a little addition to my sewing room wall of mini quilts.

And the quilt I received from my partner... AWESOME!! How cute is this little fox?!?